During that turbulent spring, the anarcho-syndicalist CNT tried to get work for its unemployed members, competing with the socialist union, the UGT. But anarchist purists of the FAI attacked this as reformist. They were convinced that to have anything to do with capitalist society was to be corrupted. In any case, the threat of a military rising began to unite syndicalists and members of the FAI. On 1 May the CNT held its national congress in Saragossa, ‘the second city of anarchism’. The Congress ratified the traditional position of making no pact with any political party, but listened attentively to Largo Caballero’s arguments in favour of unity between the UGT and the CNT. Neither he nor the anarchists realized that this also happened to be the communists’ secret strategy.
In spite of its restrained militancy, the Spanish Communist Party had a better organization and better discipline than other parties, and a firm will. This was what its recruits so admired as the only way to advance the cause of the working class. The Popular Front alliance was not enough for the communists. They wanted an integration of all working-class parties and unions to help them seize power. Largo Caballero, an unimaginative old trade unionist who was totally out of his depth, had no idea that Álvarez del Vayo, the adviser whom he trusted most and whom he later appointed to be foreign minister, was working closely with the Comintern agent Vittorio Codovilla. They were planning the wholesale defection of the Socialist Youth to the Spanish Communist Party, with promises of power and the argument that only the communists had the professionalism and the international support to defeat fascism.
Ettore Vanni, an important leader of the Italian Communist Party then working in Spain, said that communist discipline was accepted with a fanaticism which at times dehumanized them yet constituted their great strength. The determinist idea of ‘scientific socialism’ convinced the young militants that nothing could stop the final triumph of Marxism. They believed that absolute control of power was the only way to achieve their ideals. Spanish communists were strongly influenced by their own images of the Russian revolution, which they saw as a mixture of romantic heroism and a ruthless rejection of sentimentality to achieve what they thought would be a better society. They saw themselves as the only ones who could direct the masses correctly. Anyone who wavered or questioned this was a weak petit bourgeois, if not a traitor to the international proletariat. They derided the fears of libertarians on the corruptive influence of power, which they saw as the fussing of dilettantes on the eve of battle with an implacable enemy. Among those who responded to the call of communism was the head of the Socialist Youth, Santiago Carrillo. He had become all-powerful after having merged the socialist and communist youth movements into the Juventud Socialista Unificada. Then, when the civil war broke out Carrillo brought the organization’s 200,000 members entirely under communist control in a carefully staged manoeuvre during the chaos of the fighting.
In Catalonia the communists merged with the Unió Socialista, the Catalan arm of the PSOE and the Partit Català Proletari to constitute the PSUC (Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya), which soon also came under total communist control. Communists who had followed Trotsky, on the other hand, had grouped themselves in 1935 in the POUM (Partit Obrer d’Unificació Marxista) under the leadership of Joaquim Maurín. In the Basque country or Euskadi, the statute of autonomy, was finally approved and in Galicia the statute of autonomy was passed with a massive majority on 28 June.8
During that early summer of 1936, the situation in Europe was tense. Hitler was remilitarizing the Rhineland in a flagrant violation of the Treaty of Versailles. He was also putting pressure on the Austrian chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, as part of his strategy to prepare the Anschluss. Mussolini invaded Abyssinia and openly considered the possibility of extending his new empire in North Africa. In France the Popular Front won the elections, with Léon Blum leading the new government, but the reaction of the right revealed that France might face political turmoil.
In Spain, the pace of political violence and strikes increased with the onset of summer. On 1 June the UGT and CNT called all building workers, mechanics and lift operators out on strike. During the demonstration of 70,000 workers which followed, the stewards were attacked by armed Falangists, the strikers sacked food shops and the security forces had to be called in. At the beginning of July the UGT accepted arbitration but the CNT fought on. Members of the CNT responded to the Falangist attacks in kind and killed three of José Antonio’s bodyguards in a café. The government closed CNT centres in Madrid and arrested the strike leaders, David Antona and Cipriano Mera. Mera later became the most effective anarchist commander in the civil war.
In the middle of June in Málaga, anarchists and socialists became involved in battles condemned by the leaders of both CNT and UGT, while out in the countryside 100,000 CNT labourers declared themselves to be on strike. On 16 June Gil Robles stated in the Cortes that since 16 February 170 churches had been burned, 269 murders had been committed and 1,287 people injured. Altogether 133 general strikes and 216 local strikes had been called. His statistics, it must be pointed out, came from the less than impartial source of El Debate, but that did nothing to contradict the general impression that Spain was becoming ungovernable.9
Calvo Sotelo backed him up with a list of accusations against the government and warned that patriotic soldiers would save Spain from anarchy. When he personalized his insults, the president of the Cortes forced him to withdraw his words. There can be no doubt that his intention was to increase the sensation of complete disorder. The crescendo of insults and accusations from both sides tended to confirm that parliamentary government had broken down irretrievably.
Black propaganda was being used in a confusing profusion and at times it is hard to know what to believe. For example, the right claimed that the left was spreading rumours that nuns were handing out poisoned sweets to children, while the left claimed that the right itself spread these rumours to provoke anti-clerical outrages. Time and again, the right wing press compared Azaña to Kerensky and José Antonio reminded the Spanish army of the fate of Tsarist officers.10
In 1936 the Spanish army consisted of some 100,000 men. Nearly 40,000 of them were the tough and efficient troops based in Morocco, but the rest in the metropolitan army were of little use. ‘In Spain’, as one historian pointed out, ‘there was not enough ammunition for a single day of warfare, military production was in chaos, and there were hardly any armoured vehicles, anti-tank weapons or anti-aircraft guns.’11 Several thousand soldiers never received uniforms and many more never received any weapon training. Conscripts were often used as free domestic labour by officers.
The low military efficiency of the army had not stopped pronunciamientos in the past and, despite the fighting in Asturias, the officers plotting a rebellion did not appear to have been overly concerned by the opposition that they might face.12 Azaña’s government, while aware of a possible threat, did not deal with it effectively. Immediately after the elections, they took the unfortunate precaution of sending the most suspect generals to appointments far from the capital, such as General Franco to the Canary Islands and General Goded to the Balearics. In an age of aviation it was hardly a true island exile. In addition, Las Palmas was close to Morocco and Mallorca to Barcelona. General Emilio Mola, the main organizer of the conspiracy, who would take the codename the ‘Director’, was sent as military governor to Pamplona, the fief of the Carlists and their 8,000 requetés who were ready to march.13